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But the main thinking error is that we just cannot compare DP to acoustic instrument...They are mode for different people, different needs, different skills. Of course, there is some kind of the common area in the AP and DP usage, but...

The OP may have some more or less valid points but I didn't really like the tone of the post. Stirrin' it up a tad, aren't we?

Putting aside any technical analysis, the DPs I encounter in my various travels routinely and profoundly disappoint me. Crap tone, crap speakers, crap keys, crap UIs, etc. I saw / heard the AG for the first time a year ago in the flesh and it struck me as pretty weak tea when compared to the real thing - the reps on hand were talking it up like it was superior to an AP, which made the experience even more surreal. I guess I'm less disappointed by the low end, where expectations are low-to-nonexistent to begin with, but it's more of a "hey, look what they can do with a pile of plastic and $20 worth of electronics" kind of thing. All DPs are seriously overpriced for what they are. And there is no technical or financial reason they can't be significantly better by this point. And their abilities are generally overhyped - their ad copy writes checks their products can't cash.

Like most DPs, the SN sound seems to suffer badly when rendered via speakers instead of headphones. I'm starting to think the ideal DP speaker might be the open baffle type (as ChrisA advocated a while back).

Interesting thought.

The first day I owned the RD-700NX, I plugged it into my home stereo (decent Boston Acoustic speakers) and it sounded pretty lame; I've always thought that was my stereo, though. Also, when playing back recorded performances of the RD on the stereo, it does not seem to sound as good as Ivory or the Vintage D.

I only use headphones when playing the Roland, and with headphones, it sounds very good.

The 700NX sounded excellent through my RCF TT08As...and that was before I bought the JM-110 pre/di. It would probably sound even better now. But yes generally speaking, I think it fares best on a solo recording or over phones.

The 700NX sounded excellent through my RCF TT08As...and that before I bought the JM-110 pre/di. It would probably sound even better now. But yes generally speaking, I think it fares best on a solo recording or over phones.

I think those are PAs? What would you use if you were setting a board up in your house? I'm not convinced that studio monitors are the way to go. But many on this forum use them.

I actually use the RCFs. The TT line of RCF are pretty high definition...not your usual QSC,EV, JBL, Mackie MI fare. I have a pair of Dynaudio BM6As that I monitor my acoustic recordings of my Steinway. I've tried the Dyns on both the CP5 & Nord Piano. For just playing my DP through at home, I prefer these RCFs to my Dynaudio monitors.

Lets take the 3k pounds example, buying a 3k pounds upright and play it for 10 years, it would still be a keeper. However if you buy a top of the line 3k pound yamaha cp1 stage piano, no way you will keep it after 10 years the advances in technology would have made it obsolete long ago. Replacing the digital would mean paying more money, making more expensive than buying an acoustical piano in the first place.

AP: $3000CP1:$3000

10 years later:AP : tuning @ every 8 month for $120, cost 1.8K, can sell for 2KCP1: no tuning cost, can sell for $300

Adjusted residual value:AP: $300 (+/- $1000)CP1:$300 (+/- $300)

The AP is still the same AP, with a bit of wear and tear.The CP1 is still the same CP1, with a bit of marks and dents.

Monetary value of 10 years of investment: worthlessEnjoyment value of 10 years of music : priceless

Of course, because that's what trolls do. It's the easiest thing in publishing just to pick a controversial subject or argument, tart it up with bit with bigotry or intolerance and then sit back and watch people fall for it.

Putting aside any technical analysis, the DPs I encounter in my various travels routinely and profoundly disappoint me. Crap tone, crap speakers, crap keys, crap UIs, etc. I saw / heard the AG for the first time a year ago in the flesh and it struck me as pretty weak tea when compared to the real thing - the reps on hand were talking it up like it was superior to an AP, which made the experience even more surreal. I guess I'm less disappointed by the low end, where expectations are low-to-nonexistent to begin with, but it's more of a "hey, look what they can do with a pile of plastic and $20 worth of electronics" kind of thing. All DPs are seriously overpriced for what they are. And there is no technical or financial reason they can't be significantly better by this point. And their abilities are generally overhyped - their ad copy writes checks their products can't cash.

Well, I think we all realize that acoustic pianos will not be beaten in realism department for the time being, simply because they are as real as it gets. Digitals are still sort of an approximation of their acoustic counterparts and I'd be the first to admit it.

With that said, however, I don't really believe that digitals are "junk" or "crap" as you say. I don't know, maybe you are used to the AP's so much that you can't settle for the "artifical" flavor of a digital anymore or you have had access to many acoustic grands and whenever you have sat at a digital piano, you mentally put it side-by-side to to all those AP's and see/feel the deficiencies of the former. That's probably fine by me, I guess. But the list of institutions buying Clavinova's that someone has posted in this thread says that the DP's can't be all bad. I assume that the decisions to buy these pianos were made by people who did know what they were doing and if the Clavinova's really were "crap", it would mean a lot of wasted money.

I can't really comment on the pricing with respect to the technologies used, though, since I lack that knowledge. I would agree that especially the high-end digitals are quite spendy (in my country, the top model of the Clavinova CLP series carries pretty much the same price tag as a new Petrof upright) but I don't really know if the technologies used in DP's sold nowadays are the best available or not. I've seen the Physis piano in the NAMM 2013 thread -- that one seemed to have some pretty nifty gimmicks in it but at this point in time I consider it maybe a little more than a proof-of-concept kind of thing.

The OP may have some more or less valid points but I didn't really like the tone of the post. Stirrin' it up a tad, aren't we?

Putting aside any technical analysis, the DPs I encounter in my various travels routinely and profoundly disappoint me. Crap tone, crap speakers, crap keys, crap UIs, etc. I saw / heard the AG for the first time a year ago in the flesh and it struck me as pretty weak tea when compared to the real thing - the reps on hand were talking it up like it was superior to an AP, which made the experience even more surreal. I guess I'm less disappointed by the low end, where expectations are low-to-nonexistent to begin with, but it's more of a "hey, look what they can do with a pile of plastic and $20 worth of electronics" kind of thing. All DPs are seriously overpriced for what they are. And there is no technical or financial reason they can't be significantly better by this point. And their abilities are generally overhyped - their ad copy writes checks their products can't cash.

+1

Once new model is released, repeatedly old tiny sample set is used, many short cuts are done and again we are disappointed. Even Clavia, which is quite forward looking company: if it releases 400MB piano or 100MB rhodes it would be a miracle. But at the same time we have cellphones with multi-core processors and many GB of memory.

I don't know, maybe you are used to the AP's so much that you can't settle for the "artifical" flavor of a digital anymore or you have had access to many acoustic grands and whenever you have sat at a digital piano, you mentally put it side-by-side to to all those AP's and see/feel the deficiencies of the former. That's probably fine by me, I guess.

My wife teaches private piano here at home and also has a church gig, so I hear a real, decent, maintained, brightish grand piano a couple of hours a day. Played through speakers, I can't say I've ever encountered a situation where a DP fooled me into thinking it was an AP. Looping, stretching, too few layers, and lack of resonance invariably add up to a dull, lifeless sound. The cheap speakers don't help either.

Originally Posted By: Clayman

But the list of institutions buying Clavinova's that someone has posted in this thread says that the DP's can't be all bad. I assume that the decisions to buy these pianos were made by people who did know what they were doing and if the Clavinova's really were "crap", it would mean a lot of wasted money.

DPs are bought by all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons, some rational, some irrational. If you need the things only a DP can give then you obviously need a DP and should probably buy one. That doesn't mean they are anywhere near as good as they could/should be at this point, or that they are reasonably priced.

3. Key position that is continuously sensed, not inferred from two or three switches.

I don't particularly see why this would be necessary. Two switches to determine the velocity of the hammer at release and one to determine whether the dampers are engaged or not. There *might* be an issue with DP implementation in that the two switches are not as close together as we would like so instead of giving us the release velocity they give us an average velocity. If this is the case I suppose it's due to the tolerances on the switches that are currently being used. That being the case I would prefer a better type of switch, but I don't see any reason to think that it should be continuous. Do you?

While I could see the possibility of a theoretically more complete modelling by using continuos velocity measurement (or position which could be equivalent) of key movement, but how much would it be better than the n sensor approximation - I cannot say for now either. I think it could be sufficient even with n=3. some better n=2 solutions yielded already playable expressive keyboards.

I don't particularly see why this would be necessary. Two switches to determine the velocity of the hammer at release and one to determine whether the dampers are engaged or not. There *might* be an issue with DP implementation in that the two switches are not as close together as we would like so instead of giving us the release velocity they give us an average velocity. If this is the case I suppose it's due to the tolerances on the switches that are currently being used. That being the case I would prefer a better type of switch, but I don't see any reason to think that it should be continuous. Do you?

Yes. So that the final velocity is real, and not a rough approximation. And so note-off damping is a changing position, rather than a velocity. It's trivially easy to apply non-constant pressure to a key while playing (almost certainly the norm) and it's also easy to apply note off damping on a real piano in very complex ways. Two and three sensor actions might seem pretty OK (I'm kind of shocked they work as well as they do) and many can obviously easily adapt to them, but a real continuous sensor would give you tons of extra control over what actually happens, when, and how.

In many ways it would be nice to move past the bandwidth limitations of MIDI, which is how we got all this velocity nonsense in the first place. I mean, it's OK to a first order, but if you're going after realism I think you need more detailed data that key position can give you. And this isn't pie-in-the-sky stuff, it's all easily doable with 10 year old (or likely older) technology.

@Dewster, Pv88 - if only I had the time and resources to develop a DP -- I would build one with a dual bios, with the second one customizable, and lay waste to every DP manuf on earth. Imagine a Linux rom with a 128GB ssd behind it (300MB/s), and a 4 core x86 around 2GHz and 25W TDP for processing power, 8GB ram (30GB/s). About $350 of electronics would destroy anything offered today ...

Better ExperienceA sophisticated digital signal-processing algorithm (DSP) analyzes the slightest key movement thousands of times a second. It delivers MIDI messages based on acceleration vectors, not just key speed at the bottom. Its more about how you play the note than how you hit the note. For example, you can play trills without fully depressing the keys. Many of the best keyboard players in the world play the VAX77 and find it to be the most expressive keyboard instrument ever. Never before could you play a MIDI keyboard so softly. And no matter how strongly you attack the keys, it always feels like you can dig down and get a little more out of it.

Have you thought of seriously sending your ideas (about the continuous sensor) to Roland, Yamaha, Kawai, etc., and see if they could make a prototype model?

Or, are you currently working on a keyboard that would implement it?

I would even consider buying one if there is someone that can do it.

As of now, there's nothing better than the V-Piano.

I really don't think the engineers at Yamaha/Roland/Kawai etc. haven't thought about this already but for some reason they stick to whatever we have today. I'm not sure I share dewster's "conspiratory" point of view that manufacturers purposely sell products with sub-par technologies but it's an interesting question nonetheless.

In many ways it would be nice to move past the bandwidth limitations of MIDI, which is how we got all this velocity nonsense in the first place.

- just a minor side-issue on bandwidth, I don't mean to divert the OP but do you (or does anyone) know how fast midi data is pushed through a USB port into a PC? I know both MIDI and USB are serial ports but the latter has a theoretical max rate of 480kb/s (v2) while MIDI is a little over 31kb/s. I was never convinced, when using a sequencer for real-time input, that otherwise tight chord timings were getting accurately reported by MIDI whereas I've a bit more faith in USB doing a better job. Does anyone have any insights?

With digital systems there is no "infinite response" and no "continuous sensing" and I'd be pretty astonished if you'd really need a full blown DSP just to get a reading from a triple sensor setup.

I'd even argue that even if you'd measured the velocity distribution of the key presses from a couple of great pianists with sufficient accuracy you'd still get a distribution you could model with sufficient accuracy on a digital.

Even so, a digital sensor with just 8 bit of resolution still can discern 256 different levels of velocity, a setup with 16 bit resolution could even measure up to 65535 unique levels of velocity per sensor.

That's pretty much enough resolution to map out a pretty realistic velocity response curve and you wouldn't need a DSP for that (not at the low frequency even a fast pianist presses the keys which is < 20 Hz or < 20 keypresses per second)

You'd still only be able to use 127 levels over MIDI though, which probably would still be quite good if the sample sets in the pianos used all 127 layers and had enough samples for all of the velocity levels and notes.

So until a decent DP isn't even able to give you the full resolution of MIDI (127 levels of velocity) with a decent polyphony and samples which are long enough and numerous enough to play most chords without looping then it's pretty moot to talk about 'continuous response' or other marketing gibberish.

This by itself wouldn't even be much of a technical hurdle, take the innards of a Korg Krome (which is able to use the German Concert D sample set of the Kronos) and pair it with a great action and you'd probably blow most of what's available today out of the water in terms of fidelity with it's 3.8 GB of available memory and even the Krome only samples each key with 8 layers of velocity.

The Kronos X uses a 64 Gb solid state disc and 4 Gb of RAM, which would be more than enough to store one or two of the ivory 2 grand sample sets and use them.

- just a minor side-issue on bandwidth, I don't mean to divert the OP but do you (or does anyone) know how fast midi data is pushed through a USB port into a PC? I know both MIDI and USB are serial ports but the latter has a theoretical max rate of 480kb/s (v2) while MIDI is a little over 31kb/s. I was never convinced, when using a sequencer for real-time input, that otherwise tight chord timings were getting accurately reported by MIDI whereas I've a bit more faith in USB doing a better job. Does anyone have any insights?

I'd be pretty surprised if MIDI over USB used anything other than the 31.25 Kbaud/s rate. With that rate you could send a MIDI event every 32 Mikroseconds.

Nigeth: I agree, in a digital system, there is no such thing as completely "continuous", however the VAX77 does NOT use a triple-sensor action - each key has a hall-effect sensor, which produces an analog signal that varies in proportion to the key-press depth, and this signal is then digitised and processed by a DSP, as evidenced by the quote I supplied.